Important Music Videos

The following are a handful of music videos widely considered to be important in some way or another.

Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' video was a work acclaimed by both fans and critics, hailed as a milestone for the ingenious 15-minute long merging of film-making and music.  Directed by John Landis, the film was inducted in 2009 into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, the first music video to ever achieve this feat.




Directed by acclaimed film-maker Michael Gondry, this video for Daft Punk's classic Around the World achieved worldwide success.



NME listed this famous Johnny Cash song's visual accompaniment as the number 1 most important music video, so it must be pretty important.

Early Examples of Music Videos

According to the Internet Accuracy Project, disk jockey-singer J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson was the first to coin the phrase "music video", in 1959. These are examples of early music videos:

Video Killed the Radio Star - The Buggles was the first video shown on MTV.


Blues singer Bessie Smith was shown in a two-reel short film singing 'Saint Louis Blues' in 1929.